THE JUST RIGHTS OF WORKERS
Jun 30 '09 (Updated Jul 04 '09)
The Bottom Line A new landmark agreement promises full union rights to workers at the nation's Catholic health care facilities.
Those seeking to guarantee workers the unfettered right to unionize have a
compelling new example of how it can be done: An agreement reached in early
June by representatives of organized labor and the Catholic health
care system.
It wasn’t easily reached. It took more than a decade of dialogue and
sometimes hostile confrontations as union organizers tried to win collective
bargaining rights for the 600,000 workers in the Catholic Church’s 600
hospitals and 1,200 other health care facilities across the nation.
The agreement was signed by key church and labor leaders -- AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney, national officers of unions representing health care
workers, and officials of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, headed by
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, DC.
The signers agreed that unions are “committed to improving workers’ lives
and to creating a more just society through leadership development, economic
citizenship, and fuller political participation.”
Catholic health care facilities and the bishops who oversee them are not
strictly bound by terms of the agreement, nor are union organizers. But they
are expected to use them as guidelines for their conduct during organizing
drives and union contract negotiations.
The agreement is designed to apply long-standing Catholic social teachings
that recognize the dignity and “just rights of workers.” That includes the
right of workers to “freely and fairly” decide whether to unionize – a right
recognized by Pope Benedict and other Catholic leaders, but frequently
violated by management at Catholic health care facilities.
The agreement could very well be described as a peace treaty between unions
and the health care providers, who would abandon the aggressive tactics many
have used to block employees from unionizing, and hopefully “ease the pain
and damage of past disputes.”
Using tactics identical to those of anti-union employers outside the
Catholic health care system, providers have typically cornered workers
individually to argue against union representation and ordered them to
attend meetings at which employers raise anti-union arguments without
allowing organizers to present their side. Those tactics would be barred and
employees guaranteed “equal access to information from the union and the
employer.”
Also barred would be the employer tactics of intimidating pro-union employees by threatening to fire or otherwise penalize them, and hiring “union-busting” firms that specialize in defeating organizing drives. Neither could employers claim or imply, as they frequently do, that unionization would lead to pay and benefit reductionsand poor working conditions.
Unions would agree that they also would not harass or intimidate workers or
wage anti-employer campaigns aimed at winning broad public support for their
organizing efforts, as they often have done. Nor would employers be allowed
to seek public support for their anti-union position.
Unions and employers, furthermore, “will respect each other’s mission and
not disparage each other’s institutions, leaders, representatives,
effectiveness or motives.”
The general public certainly would benefit from peaceful agreements.
Catholic facilities are the major health care providers and among the
largest employers in a considerable number of communities. Additionally, the
agreements would pledge both parties to support “affordable and accessible
health care for all.”
Once a majority of employees at a particular facility proved their desire
for unionization, either through an election supervised by the National
Labor Relations Board or by a show of union membership cards, they’d begin
negotiations with employers on a contract covering their working conditions.
Negotiators would jointly select a neutral party to mediate unresolved
issues should they fail to reach a contract agreement within 30 days.
The AFL-CIO’s Sweeney hailed the agreement as a model “for all to follow.”
That would mean, most importantly, enacting the Employee Free Choice Act
that’s long been stalled in Congress. It would restructure labor-management relations in much the same way as would the agreement between labor and the Catholic health care system.
It would be the most important reform of labor-management relations since
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms of the 1930s.
Copyright © 2009 Dick Meister
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